Thanks for all the great advice guys! makes working on the car less daunting.

to answer all the questions:
- I'm Located in South Africa (parts aren't super easy to come by but doable, and one can order things from Rimmerbros)
- the car has 136,000 km on it and the body is rust-free and in pretty good nick.
- There is no service history, but I heard the engine running(purchased for about 900 pounds so was willing to risk it) and It couldn't hear any obvious issues and started up easily. There was just an issue where it would stall once it got up to temperature. Quite strange in that it would idle fine, but then I would apply throttle and once it tried idling again it would stall.  
- I believe the HG failure was caused by one of the coolant pipes leaking fluid till the car overheated.
- I haven't rotated the crankshaft since removing the head (great tip)

I've already done some work on the cylinder head and am rebuilding it after skimming it and lapping there valves(watching lots of videos to make sure I don't mess up the timing and making sure it's within the head height limit)

 After reading all the messages I'm convinced to go ahead and remove the pistons to asses the damage and at minimum replace the damaged one and all piston rings. Will post my progress/findings here

 

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